Facing an inter-imperialist world war, what are our weapons...

Facing an inter-imperialist world war, what are our weapons, we proletarians ?

Let’s imagine. Tomorrow, there is the new great slaughter of war between the great powers and what can we hope for, attempt, on what to base our struggles, what are our strengths, our weaknesses, our policy ? How can we fight on our own proletarian bases before, during and after the outbreak of war ? How can we avoid falling into traps ? How can we avoid finding ourselves bound by the logic of war and not showing solidarity with our own exploiters ? Why can we think that the proletariat, currently absolutely disarmed (without autonomous organization, without class independence, without ideology and class program, without weapons, without alliances with oppressed and exploited layers) nevertheless has a determining potential force that can allow it to become the pole around which an alternative to the capitalist system will be built ?

First of all, knowing that the world war between the great imperialist powers will only break out when the collapse of the capitalist economy proves unmanageable, it is certain that at that moment, when the banks are closed, when savings are depleted, when salaries and pensions are no longer paid, when the States are declared bankrupt along with the trusts, the banks and the stock exchanges, then, yes, it will be clear to all proletarians that a new social system, a new mode of production, is needed.

And then, the determining factor will be the fact that the proletariat is the only class that is not objectively historically dependent on the old system of exploitation, even if it has long been subjectively dependent because the most important organizations within it are reformist, that is to say, completely dependent on the system, its institutions, its state and its possessing class. This means that the proletarians’ awareness of the need to offer an alternative has every chance of rising at the same time as anger at war and its horrors, poverty, dictatorship, as soon as it becomes clear that capitalism no longer offers any future to humanity. This is why, from this moment on, the great powers will launch into general and global war, in order to use it to muzzle anger, to divert proletarian revolutionary awareness by plunging the world into a bloodbath and will rely on the state of war to muzzle the working classes and the popular masses.

War is nothing more than one of the weapons of counterrevolution, and revolution is merely the product of the collapse of capitalism. It is the inability of big capital to move forward by investing its profits in production that forces the proletariat to once again become a revolutionary potential. Big capital may have achieved its greatest success in terms of the total mass of capital, but it has achieved its greatest failure in terms of the mass of productive investments relative to total capital. However, productive investment is the source of surplus value and therefore the true origin of all profit, despite the spectacular rise in the mass of fictitious profits, which are purely speculative.

As soon as the march towards general war is announced, we will be told : "Whatever you think of the justice of entering the war, you no longer have a choice, we must defend the camp of "our" country, of "our" State, we must aim for the victory of "our" army." And this will come from not only the warmongers but from the so-called pacifists, the reformists, the left, the unions and a certain opportunist extreme left. They will say : "We have done everything to avoid war and now we must do everything so that "our" people, "our" country (wrongly assimilated to our city, our house, our home, our family) does not suffer too serious consequences from this war." And this is false ! In the event of war between the imperialisms, the working peoples of each of these countries have only one interest : IT IS NECESSARY THAT OUR OWN IMPERIALIST COUNTRY BE DEFEATED ! This is called revolutionary defeatism. Because it is from this defeat that the victory of the proletariat can be born. Because wishing for this defeat is the only way for the proletariat to meet the challenge of war against the ruling class. Because any other policy is a betrayal of the interests of the working people. This "national betrayal" is the only true denunciation of imperialist warrior nationalism, and any other position is nothing but pacifist lies, peaceful only towards the propertied classes. Only the military defeat of imperialism, provoked and organized by the exploited, can stop the war by highlighting the power of the workers. The various forms of patriotism mixed with pacifism are nothing but bloody lies. Not to disarm and destroy the army of the imperialist bourgeoisie is to let it turn its weapons against the working people. Let us not forget that in all known historical episodes, the imperialist army followed the war between imperialisms with a bloody civil war in which the army fired on the people !

No imperialism has ever waged a war to save a people from war, dictatorship, fascism, massacre, or even genocide. The so-called democracies, their "democrats," their left-wing parties, their unions, their media who claim otherwise are outright liars who want to deceive us again tomorrow. No imperialism wages a war to support the people of its country, nor does it exploit the planet for this purpose. Imperialism, even when supposedly tempered by electoral democracy and a legal constitution, is nothing other than the power of big capital, that is, of a tiny minority that exploits the vast majority, including that of the imperialist country. It is not to enrich the people of rich countries that poor countries are put under control by imperialism. Certainly, this has long helped to delay revolutions in rich countries, but this is no longer true. The collapse of capitalism also spells the end of this deception. More than ever, imperialism means the bloodbath of workers, regardless of their nationality, origin, race, religion, or skin color. WORKERS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE TO BEAT DOWN WORLD IMPERIALISM !

The defeat, the fall of imperialism, and even the beginning of the proletarian revolt against imperialism is the beginning of the social revolution, the beginning of the end of imperialism, the beginning of the republic of soviets ! What opposes imperialism is the proletariat organized in soviets, that is, in councils of delegates elected and revocable by revolutionary proletarian general assemblies who decide everything and direct everything. Without the power of soviets, we cannot put an end to imperialism ! THOSE WHO DENOUNCE IMPERIALISM WITHOUT CALL FOR SOVIET POWER ARE CAMOUFLAGED ACCOMPLICES OF OUR ENEMIES !

The first step towards the defeat of imperialism consists of breaking the morale of the army. To also break the credibility of patriotism. To reveal and break the supposed goals of imperialism. To denounce and unmask the hidden friends of imperialism and especially those who have credibility among the workers. To denounce the crimes of imperialism and to show that they were not committed to defend the population against the crimes of other imperialisms but for far more self-interested goals that "interest" a tiny part of the population, the richest and the oppressors and exploiters of the world, people who do not belong to the same world as us. As long as the morale of the army is high, as long as the soldier blindly follows his hierarchy, no revolution can triumph. As long as the little soldier does not feel that he has goals different or even opposed to those of his leaders, the proletarian revolution hits an insurmountable wall. But, with war, the soldier sees the lies, the abuses, the crimes of the military leaders every day, and demoralization can be very rapid. The soldier is cannon fodder just as the proletarian is labor fodder, exploited, deceived, exposed, and sacrificed first. It is still necessary for the little soldier to be attracted by a combative proletariat that expresses solidarity with him and affirms that any soldier who takes sides with the revolution will be protected by it. For a soldier who revolts in wartime is very quickly physically eliminated by military repression. As soon as the army cracks, the power of the propertied classes hangs by a thread, which can be broken as long as the workers self-organize into soviets for this purpose and fight the reformist forces within them, forces that especially do not want the destabilization of the state. It is then possible for workers’ soviets to link up with soldiers’ committees. This is the signal that the revolution is ripe to prepare a new power to confront the old, to begin to challenge and then overthrow the power of the propertied classes. WAR IS NOT THE END OF THE CLASS STRUGGLE BUT ITS EXACERBATION.

Military defeat is the best weapon of proletarians who want to act in accordance with the historical interests of their class, that is, towards the power of armed workers’ councils. Conversely, the successful launch of war momentarily demolishes the morale of workers, their class sense, their confidence in their own strength. War always appears as a victory of exacerbated nationalism, reinforces hatred of other peoples, gives voice to the worst warmongers, stifles the voice of internationalists and all those who claim to be proletarians. Of course, war in no way promotes the morale and consciousness of workers, nor their organization, nor their struggles, nor their links between proletarians. Despondency, despair, fatalism, mistrust, fear, suspicion, nationalism, racism, fascism, the basest sentiments can only emerge favored in the first instance by the entry into war. Propaganda adds to this the denunciation of the real or imaginary atrocities of enemy imperialism and the camouflage of the crimes of its own imperialism. Of course, all this is not done to promote the rise of the revolution, quite the contrary, that of the counter-revolution. Let us repeat, war is not only the product of inter-imperialist rivalries but of the class struggle, which, in times of acute crisis of the dominant system, requires violent, bloody means to eradicate revolutionary risks. And mistrust has very real foundations : war allows for the systematic repression and individual and collective elimination of "enemies" by the power, class enemies being considered as war enemies. WHEN THEY MAKE WAR, WE MUST BE TELL THAT IT IS AGAINST US, THE WORKING PEOPLE, THAT THEY MAKE WAR.

The decline in proletarian morale in this first phase stems not only from fear of the horrors that are beginning or that may follow, but also from the collapse of the illusions that preceded it about the possibility of living well within the system, despite its flaws. Many proletarians have long believed that the social order was not perfect, but that one could make one’s place within it. These illusions were well organized and planned by the established order and by all the organizations installed within the system, including the left, the unions, and the false far left. The latter have constantly made people believe that one could defend one’s class interests within the institutions and that one should count on bourgeois elections and the union bureaucracies linked to the propertied classes and the capitalist state to express oneself and fight. All these deceptions have tied the workers hand and foot to their worst enemies and led them to believe that the army of their imperialism was "their" army, charged with protecting them and their families ! They are the ones who made people believe that the ruling classes could be trusted if the fate of the country was at stake ! As if the exploiters wanted to save a single people ! They are the ones who refuse the exploited and the oppressed to unite within the councils of the working people, the only mass organization capable of offering an alternative to the exploitative society. Today, on the eve of general conflict, they do not lift a finger to allow the exploited and the oppressed to unite in the struggle to prepare for a future other than this immense slaughter. And yet some of them say they are opposed to the war and some oppose the exploiters or oppose the capitalist system. But they are linked together, they stick together, even if they criticize each other. The illusions about the system that all these organizations have cultivated will cost us dearly because they have prevented us from preparing, they force us to do it under fire, in the worst conditions, but we must do it, we can do it and we can win. The propertied classes know this. They learned it from previous imperialist wars in which revolts and revolutions broke out. From the latest wave of revolts and revolutions that began in 2010-2011, which followed the economic and social collapse of 2007-2008, they learned the lesson that the global social revolution threatens to return to the forefront of history, and they intend to carry out a mass bloodbath to prevent the next international revolutionary wave from learning the lessons of the previous one and leading to Soviet power. THEY ARE AT WAR BECAUSE THEY FEAR OUR REVOLUTION.

The war is responsible for destroying revolutionary potential, but it will necessarily destroy at the same time the reformist illusions that chained and gagged the revolutionary proletariat. It will destroy, torture, terrorize, and demolish the lives of millions of human beings, but it will also free them from their reservations, their reluctance, their timidity to act revolutionaryly against exploiters and oppressors, their fears of sowing violence against a society that has never feared sowing violence, their restraint in the face of the need to terrorize those who terrorize us.

Of course, the workers and the people did not want a knife fight any more than they wanted civil war and revolution. It is the exploiters and oppressors who force them to do so. And they force us to take up arms to kill the people opposite, who, like us, are forced to take up arms to massacre their brothers in the neighboring country. So, it is legitimate to use arms to overthrow the butchers who give us such orders. There is no morality in accepting, in giving in, in submitting to the military hierarchies and civil powers that give us these orders. Our duty, the defense of our families, our dignity as men and women impose the opposite on us : the right to refuse, to revolt, to overthrow the murderous power.

All this deception that ends in bloody barbarism stems from a lie : to make people believe that this State is that of the working people, the emanation of their own will. Well, the only valid response is to truly establish the State that is the product of the decisions of the working people, the State of revolutionary workers’ councils, elected and revocable by them. And this requires disarming, dissolving, disorganizing, and demoralizing the standing army of the capitalist bourgeoisie in all countries, starting with that of the greatest powers, the imperialisms that dominate and terrorize the world. It is war that can allow us to achieve this, but it requires that the workers act as revolutionaries and set themselves the goal of destroying the lie of this capitalist State that has been presented to them as their own State. The first step for revolutionary workers is to stop being fooled by the capitalist state, which calls itself the state of the entire people, and to proclaim that its defeat is the beginning of our victory !

What are our weapons ? The first and principal weapon of the revolutionary proletariat is not to bind itself to capitalist power, not to bind itself to the defense of its system of exploitation, not to believe in the organizations that chain it to it. The second is not to be chained to institutions, even those called democratic, not to be chained to private ownership of capital and the means of production, not to be subject to its hierarchy, its legality, its forces of repression, its social order, its morality, its ideology, its philosophy, its so-called pacifism, its so-called morality. The third weapon of the proletarians is self-organization in committees of the working people seizing, with the help of the soldiers’ committees that refuse obedience to their hierarchy and to capitalist power, all decision-making power, all real powers and in particular all capital and all weapons. All organizations that claim to be on the side of the workers but reject all this are nothing but traitors to proletarian interests !

Those who fearfully say that their fellow workers are still far from being aware of all this and think that these remarks are out of place are wrong : if world war is approaching, it is because economic and social collapse has already inevitably occurred. This means that the revolutionary socialist perspective is not for the day after tomorrow. It is therefore high time to prepare, comrades, to prepare our ideas, our programs, our workers’ councils and our revolutionary party in order to prepare a socialist future for global human society !

The more the proletariat seeks to defend bourgeois democracy without implementing the methods of proletarian democracy, the more it defends capitalist peace without waging class war, the more it seeks to stabilize and make the system viable, the more it defends the enterprise, the more it believes in the role of the State in favor of the people, the more it defends capitalist prosperity, the capitalist economy and order, the more the latter have a free hand to strike the workers and the people, to favor the march to war, dictatorship, fascism.

Conversely, the more workers assert themselves as revolutionary, that is to say, capable of separating themselves from capitalist society, its institutions, its organizations, including those of the left, reformist, opportunist, associative, union and political, the more the capitalist system is powerless in the face of the force of the proletarians.